


One Hundred Strings (Snapped)

by the_sharpest_thorn



Category: Cyberpunk 2077 (Video Game), John Wick (Movies)
Genre: Abuse, Alternate Universe - John Wick (Movies) Setting, Angst, Blood and Gore, Canon-Typical Violence, Child Abuse, Dark Johnny Silverhand, Dark V, Dissociation, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Eventual Smut, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Major Original Character(s), Narcissism, Non-Chronological, Original Character(s), POV Multiple, Past Abuse, Psychological Torture, Psychological Trauma, Psychopathology & Sociopathy, Purple Prose, dark johnny, i've made up a character and i hate him completely, yo this gets dark
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-10
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-17 11:28:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28599216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_sharpest_thorn/pseuds/the_sharpest_thorn
Summary: It’s been three days since Johnny Fucking Silverhand’s engram got stuck in her head. No. It has not been pleasant.“I remember you being a lot faster.” It has been god awful, in fact. “The last guy almost slashed the femoral artery on your left thigh. You could have bled to death. And the guy before that—”“Maybe it got something to do with you putting a knife through my heart.”—The John Wick AU nobody asked for!
Relationships: Alt Cunningham/Johnny Silverhand, Female V & Jackie Welles, Johnny Silverhand/Female V, Johnny Silverhand/V, V & Jackie Welles, past - Relationship
Comments: 13
Kudos: 78





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s been three days since Johnny Fucking Silverhand’s engram got stuck in her head. No. It has not been pleasant.
> 
> “I remember you being a lot faster.” It has been god awful, in fact. “The last guy almost slashed the femoral artery on your left thigh. You could have bled to death. And the guy before that—”
> 
> “Maybe it got something to do with you putting a knife through my heart.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so i planned this to be an one-shot but once again it got out of hand and now i have a 15k+ fic on my hands and i need to divide them into chapters. here's chapter one!!
> 
> also, this is completely self-indulgent, non-canonical, everyone is probably too ooc, in a john wick universe bc i wanted dark!johnny and john wick is, like, 80% responsible for that nasty nasty thought. if you haven't watched john wick? you totally should. it's pretty cool and keanu looks awesome killing people over his dead dog. but basically there's a secret assassin underground world very reminiscent of classic greek tragedies and there's a hotel where every assassin hangs at (nobody is allowed to murder there, sorry folks!) and they all pay with gold coins and there's a secret society called the high table that calls the shots and also everyone can be an assassin apparently. that sweet old man selling hot dogs? probably most likely an assassin. he will slit your throat if there's enough bounty on your head. so think of cyberpunk 2077 if there was an even more dangerous criminal underbelly. that's john wick.
> 
> and john wick fans who stumbled upon this and think, "whatever the fuck is going on???", imagine if john was a lot angrier and impulsive and cracked crude jokes, had a metal arm, and he lived in a cyberpunk society. oh! and he got his digital self trapped in someone's head. that's cyberpunk 2077!
> 
> hope everyone is caught up and enjoy this mess of a fic!!!!

He’s coming down the hallway.

She can hear the rapid gunfire — guttural screaming silenced — the fall of an army, one by one. Quick. Precise. A sheer force of will unmatched by anyone she has ever known.

Antonia waits. She sits behind her shiny desk, legs crossed. The safe house came equipped with her own personal working station. After all, just because the most relentless dangerous man is after her doesn’t mean she gets to slack off.

“Focus on the work,” her father had said, before dropping her off in the middle of nowhere. “I’ll deal with the rest.” 

_And what a bang up job you’re doing._

She looks at the steel shut door, bullet-proof, locked six ways to sunday. Yet. Johnny will figure out a way to open it. The Devil always finds a way.

Fingers dance over the champagne glass she ordered for this very same occasion. _The day Johnny Silverhand would finally get to me._ The corpo takes a sip, ignores the shouting coming from Takemura’s mouth.

“Have you been listening to a word I’ve said?” He spins her on the chair. She takes a good look at him: there’s sweat covering his forehead, black strands loose from his tight air-do, hard lines seeping into his wrinkles, aging him further, and he just might be out of breath. “You need to leave. _Right now_!”

Antonia takes another sip. Doesn’t turn around even as the shots become louder.

“Whatever for?” She says, genuinely curious. “He won’t stop. He’s not _ever_ going to stop, Takemura.”

Johnny is one-track mind. Once he sets his eyes on something, he takes it. No matter who stands in his way. Antonia has seen him action. Almost bled to death by his hand. Experienced it through his own eyes — it is a fuming rage kept on a very tight leash, ready to bounce and bite and tear at a moment’s notice. Johnny strikes to kill. Point A to Point B. Shoot. Stab. Hit. Till the job is done. Everything fades into the background, everything else doesn’t matter. Johnny is never going to stop.

Takemura’s hands trembles. “You _need_ to leave.”

Something softens at that. Any other merc for hire would’ve skedaddled by now. But not Takemura. Brave, loyal, naive Takemura. Arasaka had burned him before, but here he stands once again, not having learned his lesson. It doesn’t matter who sits behind the desk. If it’s Saburo, Yorinobu, Hanako or even her dear old dad — you’re _always_ going to get screwed over. Because to them, the directors, the executives, investors, whatever farce the corporation has given its face to, you’re nothing but a pawn to sacrifice for their own gain. Antonia wishes Takemura had learned his lesson. Maybe he wouldn’t have been here today: on a fucking suicide mission instructed by her father; if nothing else to show how loyal a former Arasaka dog can be.

 _I hate him_ , she thinks, clutching her glass. _I hate him for putting you in an early grave._

“You leave,” she says, commands. Takemura takes a step back, eyes seeking her own. “He only wants me. Nobody else has to die.”

_Nobody else has to die for me._

“I’m not leaving.” His body is trembling. From anger or sorrow she does not know. Then, unexpected to even Antonia, Takemura takes out his gun and marches out the door, closes it behind him.

“Takemura!” She screams, shattering the mask of indifference. “What the fuck…” 

_What the fuck._

What the fuck is she supposed to do now? Why in the fuck is Goro Takemura sticking out his own neck for her? Is he that desperate for approval and validation? Does he not remember how easy it was for Hanako to throw him under the bus, even after everthing he had done for her, to protect her, to serve her — that all meant nothing if her own skin was on the line? Does he expect Antonia to come rushing in, to prove him wrong?

She throws the glass to the wall.

 _Would he stop if I asked?_ The thought pounds in her head. _Would he let him live if I asked?_

Will Johnny show her mercy, or will he exact his revenge? 

(For who has come alive on the other side after stabbing the Devil in the back?)

 _Me._ She answers. _He let me live another day._

Antonia steps out of her chair, walks rapidly to the locked the door, hand standing as she clutches the handle. She takes a deep breath. Remembers the promise he had made her so long ago.

“I will do you no wrong,” Johnny had swore to her. “When the times comes, it’ll be my life for yours.”

Antonia opens the door.

* * *

It’s been three days since Johnny Fucking Silverhand’s engram got stuck in her head. No. It has not been pleasant.

“I remember you being a lot faster.” It has been god awful, in fact. “The last guy almost slashed the femoral artery on your left thigh. You could have bled to death. And the guy before that—”

“Maybe it got something to do with you putting a knife through my heart.”

The last time they faced each other off, when Johnny still had a body and Antonia still had a mind of her own, she had tracked him down to Watson’s district, chased him through crowded areas and almost got shot, twice, and finally cornered him on the subway station. Where, in return for stabbing him in the leg, he had pierced her chest. With a hand on her lower back, pulling her forward for the last push. “The blade is in your aorta. You pull it out and you will bleed and you will die,” he had told her. The bastard. “Consider this a professional courtesy.”

Indeed. If Antonia had done anything with that knife she would have died. Fortunately, Antonia takes every advice to heart and sought out a medical team (well, Viktor brought them in, after he arrived on the scene) every golden coin could hope for. Her stay at the Continental lasted for a year and a half. By far the most she ever spent in a hotel room; and that’s counting that time she had to track down Arasaka’s deserters in Spain.

Antonia can still fight (if inadvisable), can still outhack and outslice any low of the mill merc (if, still, inadvisable), but she needs to catch her breath more often. Can’t go in guns blazing and hoping to come out unscathed. And yes, she’s slower now. So Johnny is finally right about something.

“It was either you or me on that train. I stopped you. You would have done the same thing,” he says, on his imaginary third cigarette. Black three piece in ruins. Burnt sleeves and holes and scratches. He looks just like that day on the subway. Dark long hair freed, face a bloody mess, and eyes betraying what Johnny truly is — a madman on an adrenaline rush. “That what you truly think of me?"

She scoffs, reaching for the heart-shaped case of cigs. A leftover present from Evelyn. Before this business screwed her over, too. Antonia looks over the balcony of a ruined crumbled up building, the very one they just killed an annoying batch of Arasaka dogs. The sun is rising and its bright orange color mixes with the starless sky. Flashing lights fade as it climbs up, and shares with Night City a flicker of warmth. Her hands are tender, bruised, with small cuts over her knuckles. Antonia shrugs, lights a cigarette. She hates the taste. The smell. The way it lingers on the back of her throat. But it calms Johnny down and the fucker won’t stop bugging her otherwise.

“Only a madman would wage war knowing he’d lose.”

“But I didn’t lose,” he says, grinning from ear to ear. “If anything, it was put on pause.”

Antonia rolls her eyes. “Sure, Johnny.” _Narcissistic pendejo._

“What were you thinking anyway, huh? Going after me.”

Smoke escapes her lips. “Four million sounded nice.”

“Four million? That’s all Arasaka put on my head?”

“You weren’t much to them, in the beginning,” she explains. 

Which is correct. Johnny Silverhand was but a blip in the ocean of assassins for hire. Not someone you would want to screw over, but definitely not someone that would be on everyone’s radar. (The “impossible” mission he had to acomplish to retire had blended itself into a myth. Something you’d tell a new recruit to see if they crumbled under pressure. At least, that’s what most of their colleagues would say. Fear, after all, is better ignored when pronounced false.) Once his one-man crusade began, however, every little fucker stood up on attention. The number bodies just kept pilling up. Up and up and up. (Myth had become reality.) Then, yes, Johnny Silverhand became a fucking problem.

The former Boogeyman throws his cigarette off the balcony. Watches it fall till it glitches and fades out of existence. He snickers.

“And then it was too late.”

Antonia frowns. “You got your mind scooped out of your body. What do you mean it was too late?”

Johnny stares out into Night City, hands tangling over the fragile railing. He glances at her, eyes dark and focused. “You don’t know, do you?”

Something in his voice makes her hair stand on end. She brushes it off. “Know fucking what?”

He looks straight at Antonia. Dives into the back of her mind and tugs on invisible strings. It makes her gasp, fingers spasm, and her cigarette falls down. She takes a step back. Confused at the sudden force of pain in the back of her skull. Johnny sees something in her, she thinks. Because he lets it go. The ache dissipates as fast as it came. Antonia is left trembling in his wake. 

_Fuck you, Johnny._

“Doesn’t matter,” he says, like it’s all she needs.

“ _Pendejo_ ,” she sneers. “What was it all for, uh? What was so precious and noteworthy you had to give up your whole life for? For Alt? Was that it? A fuck buddy of yours gets killed and you lose your fucking marbles?”

He grabs her by throat and pushes her into the railing, the metal sticking into her back, pushing on her bruises. Antonia groans as his fingers tightens around her. Johnny grunts, teeth bared. Looking like every bit of the mad dog she knows him to be.

“They killed her,” he spits in her face. “They took her and they fucking murdered her when she was no longer of use to them. Make no mistake, Arasaka had it coming for a very long time. But that day they made the biggest mistake of their lives.”

“And what was that?” She wheezes out of her lips, hands tightening around his wrist.

He stares at her, body shaking along with hers. His rage feeding back to her. 

“They took what was _mine_.”

Antonia laughs, or at least, tries to, with that hand still wrapped around her neck, breathless sounds escaping her mouth in intervals. _Oh, of course_ , she shouts in her mind. _Of course Alt’s death is all about dear fucking Johnny, isn’t it._

The Boogeyman lets her go. Antonia falls to the dirty floor, chest heaving.

“You don’t know shit about me,” he says, pacing back and forth.

“Yeah, Johnny?” The ex-corpo says, when she finally catches her breath. “I saw through your memories. I know what you did. I know how you felt.”

“They had to die.”

And he keeps repeating it, over and over and over and over—

“Or was it something different, hmm?” Instigation might not be the smartest path to take here, but Antonia is tired. She’s tired of running. Tired of backing off. Tired of sharing her mind with the man who put her career on the shelf. Overall, she is just so fucking exhausted. “Was it guilt, Johnny? Couldn’t handle the fact they snatched her in front of you so you put all the self-hatred into Arasaka instead?”

Johnny glares, feet stopping in front of her. Fists tighten at his sides.

“I don’t feel that.”

She snickers, “I call bullshit.”

“You think because you saw through a few of my memories you know me, V? You think someone like you knows anything about me? Grow up.”

“You loved her,” Antonia says, as sure as she knows she’ll be dead at the end of the month. “She gave you a slice of normal life, didn’t she? Alt didn’t see you as the Boogeyman. She only saw Johnny, the asshole who liked his coffee black and drove a Porsche while raging about the system. She saw you as human. And loved you all the same. You couldn’t give that up, could you? Even when you knew this life would follow you fucking everywhere. _Infecting_ everything around you.” 

Johnny used to watch Alt while she slept, playing with her long hair and caressing her skin. Wondering, exasperatedly, how in the hell was he this lucky to land a girl like her? How did Alt see past bullshit and stay with him all the same? Why does she let him touch her and kiss her and call her his? In exchange for what, his love? His love has edges and they cut through flesh, leaving nothing untouched or undisturbed, consuming from the inside out, just to make sure Alt would never forget his name — to leave his mark upon someone so intimately, that time became not a friend but a jailer; there only as a reminder who left such imptints upon her heart. 

The funny thing is, Alt wanted him all the same. Curses be damned! Alt Cunningham wanted Johnny Silverhand and she had him. For a time. Before Arasaka ripped her away from him. 

Antonia had never felt this kind of love before. Never saw even a glance of it from someone else. It left her to ache for something vacant. Something that does not exist. Not for people like her. 

“When Arasaka murdered Alt, they took from you. Your pursuit for bloodshed was not vengeful. Not really. It felt right to you, didn’t it? Right. Justice. They don’t get to take away what’s yours and get away with it. Their little run-in-the-mill assassination was a call to war. And you took it.”

Johnny kneels in front of her. Shit-eating grin falling on his blood soaked features.

“Aw, is the icy corpo cunt feeling something besides contempt? How quaint.”

Antonia grabs the blockers from inside her jacket. Pops a couple just to make the bastard stays quiet.

“ _Hijo de puta_ ,” she whispers into thin air. Despises how right the motherfucker is.

* * *

If somebody had asked Johnny how he got into the business, he’d say it was completely by accident. (Well, actually, he’d tell that somebody to fuck off. But, semantics.) Wrong place. Wrong time. A few years after he got his arm blown off (and told the U.S. government to go get fucked in the ass without lube), he met a man outside the club Samurai was scheduled to play at. The asshole looked every bit of corpo scum. Short hair slicked back, pressed suit, nice newly polished suits. And a permanent frown in that squeaky clean face.

“Wanna make some money?” He had asked. “Some actual good money, not the shitty change they give you to play here.”

At first, he thought the fucker was propositioning him. Wouldn’t be the first time, nor would it be the first time he’d said yes. But Johnny fucking hates corpo rats. So, he was about to curse the guy out when he explained further.

“An associate of mine is going to be here tonight. You’re just his type. After the show, I want you to take him out back and shoot him in the head.”

The pay was actual quite good. Thrice whatever nickles Samurai was making at that lousy gig.

But once again, Johnny hates corpos. He took the money, then informed the associate of what the other man was up to, offered to off him for half the price. The man he spared was none other than Viggo Tarasov, the notorious Russian crime boss. 

That night, Tarasov saw the potential in Johnny and took him under his wing.

  
“Run with me, boy,” he had said, smiling from ear to ear. “And not only will you never grow hungry but you’ll have enough to wipe your ass every single fuckin’ night.”

Johnny sometimes wonder what he could have been if he hadn’t taken Tarasov’ offer. Would have Samurai been successful? Would they have made a difference? Would any of it have mattered, would they have inspired anything — a riot, a revolution — besides horny frenzied groupies? When those thoughts come rumbling up and over Johnny tries to remember what kind of man he was at that age. Filled with anger and spite. Anything noble and righteous scraped out of him from an unnecessary war that cost him an arm and his sanity. Maybe Samurai would have become the next big thing. But Johnny would have used it for his own selfish reasons. He knows himself that much at least; has always been one track mind. (Robert comes first; anyone else, second.)

He hopes he still would have met Alt. That woman had been a silver lining in a very dark crumbling tunnel. Johnny doesn’t know why she put up with him — if she was in love with him at all — but he thanked whatever unholy being watching over him for every moment he got to spend with her. She brought out of him things he didn’t even know existed: a lightness, a humor, an ease. Alt would touch him with a gentleness he’d always fear (because what hasn’t he touched that crushed under his weight) but one he’d always beg for once he couldn’t take the teasing anymore. His girl knew all his soft spots. What’s more surprising, she’d never use it against him. Not once. Then again, she was brilliant, smarter, and more cunning than any wannabe corpo he’d knew, with a tenderness to soften her brutal honesty. Alt’s reprimands didn’t feel like scolding, it felt like care — that Johnny was important to her.

Tarasov was none at all happy when he asked to retire.

He was so unhappy, in fact, the Russian requested one last task from him, so impossible, so fucking absurd and laughable, Tarasov said, “If you can’t do it, John, that’s quite alright. We’ll just go back to you taking my orders and forget any of this ever happened.”

Perhaps it was that comment. Perhaps it was the build up resentment. Perhaps it was the thought of saying no to Alt again, of having to choose this job over her, always wanting more out of something that couldn’t last in this kind of business. Perhaps it was all of it combined. Johnny was fueled with something dark and raging that night. Something that did not held up until the job was finished and he had Tarasov’s bloody fingertip on their marker.

That night Johnny fucked Alt till they were both out of breath; himself filled with bruises and marks to signify who he now belonged to.

* * *

He only gets back four hours later. She’s already in the safe house, having showered and cleaned up and stitched her wounds. Johnny Silverhand sits on her bed, staring at nothing but the cement wall.

“Alt was kidnapped while I was with her,” he says, “I was drunk. I was pissed about something I don’t even remember. I was naive and I let my guard down. It was because of me they got to her.”

Antonia stares at the presumed Boggeyman everyone fears. The man who had his metal hand wrapped around her throat. 

All she sees is a fucking coward.

“You know, all this self-centered bullshit is starting to piss me off,” she says, walking to the bed, ignoring the confused look on his face. “She got killed because Arasaka got a sniff of what she was doing with Militech. Not because of you.”

He huffs. The man actually, grumply, huffs.

“You don’t get it.”

“Have your pity party all you want, Johnny.” She gets under the covers, ignoring any other annoying sound out of the man-child living in her brain. “I’m going to sleep. I had a shitty day and a dickhead tried to choke me. I’m tired.”

Antonia turns off the lights. Settles into bed and tries to tune out Johnny’s rustling behind her. She can feel him laying beside her. Hands hovering her body, unsure. The ex-corpo pulls the covers over her head, bone tired of her parasite’s antics. Finally, she feels him laying his hands beside her head. The ex-corpo can hear him breathing. Can feel the Boogeyman’s eyes on her. He inhales. Try as she might, she cannot fall asleep. Antonia can feel all the twists and knots he’s wrapping himself in. The rage. The uncertainty. It’s all he has felt since they became the ironic conjoined twins of Night City. All of it is a trick of her mind, of course. Johnny Silverhand is dead. Murdered at the hands of Arasaka for his killing spree of seven days. He is not real. Johnny is dead and all Antonia is left with is his ghost. A well constructed program built upon memories, past thoughts and emotions. The Johnny next to her is as real as the voice assistant on her computer. She knows all that. But the way his touch lingers on her back, unsure, hesitating, the way he keeps breathing, making these normal human sounds — it all feels so fucking real that it cracks something inside her.

_What could you have been if you hadn’t died, Johnny?_

“I won’t do it again,” he whispers. He knows she’s awake. “Putting my hands on you. I won’t do it again.”

She sighs, body falling to numbness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i've tagged that i made up an oc which i completely hate and it's not antonia. it's her dad. i fucking hate him. you'll probably meet him in the next chapter. we'll see!
> 
> (and if anyone spots the gone girl easter egg you get a cookie!)


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Johnny spots the guitar by the couch. The corner of his lips lift up. He walks over, picks it up, and sits while toying with its strings. 
> 
> Antonia is fascinated by the sight. Not only by the sheer impossibility of it all — Johnny is not alive, Johnny can’t interact with objects, Johnny isn’t playing right now, her mind is just making her believe he is — but by the way his features soften. How his hands delicately touch the instrument, the joy in his eyes as it rings a tune with a swipe of his fingers. The Boogeyman looks human.

A nice little corner of heaven. A miracle of a hidden place undisturbed by Night City. Antonia thinks this might have been an old music studio, left to rest by its owner; if by choice or not she does not know. Either way, it’s a nice place to rest till she can catch her breath.

Johnny spots the guitar by the couch. The corner of his lips lift up. He walks over, picks it up, and sits while toying with its strings.

Antonia is fascinated by the sight. Not only by the sheer impossibility of it all — Johnny is not alive, Johnny can’t interact with objects, Johnny isn’t playing right now, her mind is just making her believe he is — but by the way his features soften. How his hands delicately touch the instrument, the joy in his eyes as it rings a tune with a swipe of his fingers. The Boogeyman looks human.

“Every played one of those, Johnny?” She asks, sitting next to him.

“I have, actually,” he replies, fingers dancing between the strings. It’s a soft tune. Up-beat in the beginning, but turning melancholic by the end. Soothing. “Started a band when I was discharged from the army. We were good. Played at a few shit holes and everything. Ha. Good times. We even got some t-shirts made.”

Antonia’s eyebrow lifts up. No fucking way.

“What was it called?”

Johnny smiles as the tune gets quicker, “Samurai.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“Nope.”

The image that pops into her head: the Boogeyman, in leather pants and a torn up shirt, raging at a drunk-filled crowd, screaming Samurai at the top of his lungs. Antonia laughs, loud and sudden. She relaxes into the couch, legs going over the table in front of them. Johnny follows her lead. This is nice.

“Why did you call it that?”

“In 1877, a group of disgruntled samurai staged a revolt against the new imperial movement. It lasted almost a year. Unemployed and discarded men all banded together to fight against a system they thought was unjust. Of course, they lost. But not without a fight. It felt fitting.”

“And it sounded cool.”

He chuckles, “Yeah, that too.”

She hums, content in watching his hands move across the guitar strings, unhurried, almost gentle. So unlike the man she knows.

“Why didn’t you continue to be a musician?”

The music stops. Johnny’s hands tighten over the instrument. And like that, they are both snapped into reality. The brutal, cruel world they walk on, the one whose names you have to write in blood, otherwise, what’s the damn point. The ambiance grows heavy and Antonia feels like Johnny is about to smash that guitar into the ground. He does not. Instead, he places it back into its place. Remains silent as he stares out into nowhere. He sighs, gets up.

“Because it was a dream,” he tells her, lighting a cigarette. “And dreams don’t last very long in the real world.”

_So you become an assassin instead, uh? Never pegged you for a cynic._

“Nah, V. Just a realist.”

Antonia rolls her eyes, “Sounds like you just gave up.”

Johnny grounds the cig into the dirty carpet. The stain does not stay. “Yeah? How about you, Miss Ice Princess? Couldn’t handle the pressures of the corpo lifestyle so you decided to become an assassin instead? Sounds like jumping from a bad decision to a death sentence.”

She is not bothered, not in the slightest. “I was only made for this,” she replies. “Where else would I have run to?”

“The fuck you on about?”

Antonia shakes her head, gets up as well. “Nothing. Just something stuck in my head.”

At that, he frowns. Reaches closer. His fingers find her wrist and something shocks her from within. She brushes him off.

_Stop being an asshole and let’s go._

Johnny Silverhand does not say another word. He disappears into thin air as soon as she crosses the threshold into Night City. 

Antonia wishes he hadn’t left her alone.

* * *

Jackie Welles had been the one true honorable thief among butchers and murderers. (Or at least, he was what he wanted others to see; and isn’t that a thin lie? Who you are and what you show to the world.)

He had always had a soft spot for her. Antonia figures he blamed himself for not being there enough — for not warning little Antonia of her father enough.

They drifted away after his suicide. She, fifteen, starting university, he, nineteen, just shot his first man to death. They did reunite, however, four years later at the Continental’s club. It had been a surprise to see him there. She always figured Jackie had too many ethics to fall into the darker world of Night City. (Once again, a facade? Or just something she wishes had been true?) 

Apparently, it paid to be friendly to the rotten crowd. He was a damn good mercenary, and had the contacts to prove himself worthwhile.

She figures one of his last acts of kindness had been born out of pity. Jackie did warn her.

“Careful, _chica_ ,” he had said, in one of his more sober moments. “ _El hombre del saco no vino a jugar._ ” The Boogeyman didn’t come to play.

After three years of forced retirement, Jackie approached her in a run down cafe where she had just threatened a banker with information of his passionate affair with a Maelstrom member.

“Heya, Toni!”

“It’s _V_ , Jackie,” she had politely informed over coffee.

“Tired of blackmailing wannabe politicians?”

“I also exploit members of the government, but sure, you could say I’m a bit tired of the domestic life.”

Right there and then Jackie told her all about his plan to steal from Arasaka. Contracted by the one and only Dexter DeShawn. Here he was, delivering her a piece of the big pie, to get back at the corporation who threw her out like a used napkin, and all she had to do was say _yes_.

Besides regretting not saying no, Antonia also wishes she had dragged Jackie out of the dark pit he had dug himself into.

* * *

It begins in a slow dance. A week goes by, and an itch grows in her fingertips. She starts to eye the heartshaped case more often. Each day, three cigarettes get into her hand, tossed aside as soon as the taste gets too much; but Antonia craves them all the same. At first, it doesn’t bother her. She tells herself it’s for Johnny. To appease Johnny. To make Johnny shut the fuck up. Then, her appetite changes. Greens taste funny, or better yet, they taste like nothing at all, like a big pile of mush. The ex-corpo turns to fast food: burgers with too much meat and cheese, two sides of fries, and the oiliest pepperoni pizza while they’re at it. It makes her queasy afterward. Still, her hunger is not satiated till she gets her fingers greasy and mouth dirty from the splash of ketchup.

Antonia doesn’t feel threatened. It’s harmless, she tells herself. What’s so bad about your diet changing?

Then, she is faced with the man who used Evelyn like she was a toy, who raped her, repeatedly, then sold her when he got bored. 

The ripper doctor he sold her to? Dead. The scavengers who traumatized her further? Also dead. Antonia already had her sights on that piece of shit, but after Evelyn’s suicide, the rage just got worse. It resided in the back of her head, infecting her sight, hearing, taste. She brings Judy along for courtesy sake. (Because Judy cared about Evelyn. Judy had to find the one she loved in a bathtub filled with blood.) Antonia cuts Woodman’s tendons, watches him squeal and wail as he tries to crawl away, shoots him in both his knees, between his legs, slices off his fingers, his right arm, his nose. The little worm is left wringing on the ground like the pathetic thing he is. Antonia gives Judy her gun. Judy shoots him twice in the head.

The woman couldn’t really look at her afterward. “Thank you for the help, V,” she had murmured. “I mean it. But-… I don’t know who that was in there. You fuckin’ scared me.”

Antonia had arrived at the safe house, covered in blood not her own, hands trembling over the sink.

“Was it you?” She asks into thin air. “Is this you, Johnny?”

The Boogeyman glitches behind her. Looms over like a shadow. His eyes are dark, almost like there’s nothing behind them. But Antonia knows different. She’s seen behind the veil. Johnny Silverhand is anger embodied, sadism in the flesh; just because he keeps it close to his heart doesn’t change a damn thing.

“Want me to lie, V?” He says, voice rumbling, like some monster from a fairy tale. “Want me to make it easy for you to sleep at night? I can’t. You saw it. You felt me kill hundreds men for Alt. And now you’ve experienced it for yourself. What was it like, huh?”

Antonia washes her hands. Tries to pretend he is merely a figment of her imagination. 

He won’t let her.

“Did it feel good to torture that man, V?” Johnny whispers in her ear. “Did you like it? Didn’t it feel fucking great to pretend it was Dexter DeShawn on that floor, hmm? That you actually gave a shit about Jackie and were avenging his death?”

She breaks the mirror. The Boogeyman laughs behind her.

“Did you like pretending to be human, V?”

_Yes._

What was the point in lying to the tumor in her brain.

* * *

Antonia has seen blood before. Buckets of it, spilling out of gun shot holes, stab wounds, limbs extractions — she could go on and on. But none of it has had the visceral reaction of witnessing the red stain on Jackie’s shirt grow and grow. The smell of iron filling the back of the car, her mouth turning into dry sand at the sight of Jackie’s blue eyes dimming in light. The whole thing is awfully quick. One glance away, one touch across her cheek, and he’s gone. Just like that. His eyes are still open but Jackie isn’t there anymore.

The ex-corpo picks up the beginning of anguish and traps it inside a tiny box of rings. Tucks it away into the darkest corner of her mind. Where all those little boxes rest. Where dust settles and she pretends to forget they exist.

Antonia tells Delamain to drive Jackie’s corpse to his mother. It’s the least she can do.

* * *

The scratchy vintage phone lays in front of her. Dug out from an old shoe box she hid under a false wall panel in her closet. Antonia stares and stares. Hoping, wishing, like one of those naive school girls chanting in front of the bathroom mirror, lights out, feet together — come forth Bloody Mary and spill our guts on the floor.

_Come forth and call me, Johnny._

It rings. She picks it up on the first dial.

“Hello?”

“Antonia,” he says from the other end. Not cunt. Not V. Antonia. “Leaving was a mistake.”

“You killed forty seven men,” she says, as if she’s reciting the weather. “What else was I supposed to do?”

“You were supposed to stay.”

She rolls her eyes. “Yeah, Johnny? Really? So it would’ve been easier to put a bullet through my head?”

“You’re mine,” he breathes. And that shouldn’t fucking effect her like it does, but her breath catches all the same. She swallows the nothingness in her throat, legs crossing over her bed. “You’re fucking mine and you _left_.”

“So that means you get to fucking kill me whenever you felt like it?”

“It means you have to trust me.”

There’s anger seething inside her. How dare he? They’ve shared a mind and a body for a month. That was it. Antonia owed him nothing. In fact, her death would have been on his hands, the little parasite eating away at her core, infecting her thoughts, her actions, her memories, and her reality. She owed him nothing. The corpo choose power over death. Antonia choose to survive. If that meant replacing Arasaka with a different demon, so be it. If that meant to put Johnny back in a little box and leave him them there to rot, so fucking be it. What other choices did she have? To die six months later? To let him take over her body? Lose herself once more, and this time without Johnny holding her hand? No. _Fuck this._ Antonia owed him fucking nothing. And in the end she gave him what he wanted. Johnny has no fucking right.

“I gave you your body back,” she sneers, hand shaking. “What else do you fucking want?”

“My car, for starters,” he says, and she can feel him grinning. God, she hates him. “The jacket would be nice too.”

“Fuck off, Johnny.”

“And you,” he finishes. Softer. Almost sweet.

Antonia closes her eyes, remembers his voice singing between her ears, as if he was there, physical and real, with her, beside her. In her head non-stop. Chatting away. Being a major prick. Guiding her. Helping her. Saving her. Her own guardian angel. 

_But you were more of a devil, weren’t you, Johnny?_

“You can’t have me,” she breathes out, voice wavering. “He won’t let you.”

“I will have you,” he promises.

Tears build up in her eyes, body trembling at the thought of the blood it will be spilled. And for what? For her? What use is she to him now? She has no connections, no cyberware left in her body, forced out of the new age due to her father’s handiwork. Antonia is useless. He needs to know.

“What you’re going to do, uh, Johnny? You gonna kiss me? Or kill me? Because I don’t have anything else to give you.” She sighs, brushing the long strands of hair over her shoulder. Her hair has grown since he was with her. _Does he like it?_ She slips, and thinks. Curses. _What the fuck do I care if he likes it?_ And Antonia presses back into the matter of hand. The man responsible for their predicament. The man who she shook hands with and made a deal that sealed not only their fates but Arasaka. Her father. “He’s going to kill you. You know that, right? He doesn’t take kindly to betrayal and he can store resentment for decades. You know this. So stop. Turn back. Go live your second life in peace. _Please_. Walk away, Johnny.”

He does not respond right away. Antonia is left with silence, momentarily lifted by his breathing and rustling of clothes. Her fingers tighten over the receiver. Legs start to shake. She’s about to hung up when he speaks up.

“You’re mine,” he says, definite. Undeniable. As if he had spoke the sky is blue. “That’s all you need to worry about.”

He hangs up.

All Antonia can think of is: _But are you mine?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have no idea why Samurai is called Samurai, i've only managed to watch gameplay through youtube and i dont play the tabletop game; so here's my little non canon reason why.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s hard to distance yourself from someone when you’re in their head 24/7.

It’s hard to distance yourself from someone when you’re in their head 24/7.

Johnny had always found it easy to do so, when he was alive. Since he was a little boy, it felt like thick cement walls were between him and everyone else. He knew when they were sad, happy, angry, he just couldn’t bring himself to care that much. 

Now, that isn’t to say he didn’t understand ideals or morals. 

Robert had a naive sense of pride towards his country. _Look at us,_ he’d think, _look at the expanse, our power, how we continue to grow and build. We are the best fuckin’ country in the entire goddamn world. Fucking hell! Look how lucky we are._

Reflection tells him this was the result of thorough brainwashing from an early age. Pledging allegiance to the flag since middle school. Military propaganda disguised as well produced media. Commercials plastering on the walls confirming what he already believed. Anyone who spoke otherwise was ostracized. Bullied, beaten up, till they changed their mind or left town. Robert had been just another cog in the machine, rolling and twirling, so well greased he enlisted at the tender age of fifteen.

It took a fucking war, losing his arm, and being told he was a disgrace to his country to finally wake up.

Johnny wonders if part of waking up led him to care for others. Once again, it was easy for him to look the other way. Shoot and kill without question. But with Alt, it had been different. He’s not sure if it was empathy what really drove him to be so attached to her, but he did pay more attention to her facial features, her moods, what she said and how she said it. The Boogeyman did everything in his power to make sure Alt was safe; even from himself. He wanted to take care of her like she did him.

If he was still alive today, he knows he wouldn’t hesitate in pushing V away. To ignore her pain and stab her once again in the heart if it was necessary.  
Johnny doesn’t have the luxury to be breathing, however.

He’s stuck inside her head. All the _goddamn_ time. He knows when she’s lying, when she shows a true emotion, what she aches for, what she’s scared of, how it truly feels to keep everything inside and hidden from the world. It hurts. It _always_ fucking hurts. And God help him, Johnny cares when she’s hurt.

She’s in the middle of a car chase when everything hits her all at once. V can feel her system attacking her from the inside. Back, front, sidelines. Her vision blurs, her body goes weak, bile rises up her throat and she almost hits a car coming from the right.

“V”, he says, pleads. “Let me take over.”

“Fuck off,” she grunts, taking a left turn.

“If you keep this up you’re gonna swirl us both off the road.”

“I can take care of myself—”

“Right fucking now, you can’t! So stop being so stubborn for once in your goddamn life and let me help you.”

V hates being wrong. Second to that? Accepting anyone’s help. Johnny isn’t sure if it’s a sense of pride or whatever shit job her father did to her, but it gets on his nerves.

_Why won’t she let me help her?_

“Please, V,” he tries again, this time calmer. Even as she speeds through tight spots and barely makes it through the other side. Johnny needs her to trust him. He _needs_ to help her. “Let me save you.”

The woman glances at him, breathing steadying. Two seconds pass and it feels like an eternity. 

She nods. “Alright.” 

V reaches him through her own mind; Johnny accepts her hand and straps himself in.

* * *

Grief is hard. Even harder when you know it’s all your fault.

Johnny Silverhand had gotten better at channeling his anger, however, at redirecting it to a single target.

“Always so single-minded,” Alt used to tease, gently, kissing his skin. “Once you get your sight on something nothing can veer it away. I like it. Even if it grinds on my gears sometimes. Very few people are that focused or determined. You’re something special, Johnny. ”

He proves how true those words are when he sets his eyes on Arasaka. The corpo fuckers responsible for his missing arm. The pollution, poverty, prejudice — anything that stinks in Night City is _because_ of them. 

The same pieces of shit who took Alt, then dumped her body on a waste field. 

What Johnny did in those six nights would cement the well deserved fear his name brings.

* * *

“So you killed a few thousand people. Who gives a shit.”

“And cut off Saburo’s legs and arms. Sounds pretty good to me.”

“Yeah,” V agrees, taking the last puff of her cigarette. He won’t feel the nicotine till a few hours later, but he appreciates the gesture all the same. “But you still didn’t kill him. What’s the point of going on a vengeful crusade if you don’t even murder the guy who killed your girlfriend?”

Johnny grinds his teeth, “Didn’t have the time.”

“Right. Of course. Torturing him was far more important to you than avenging Alt.”

“Shut up,” he hisses, glitching away from the place he was sitting and standing in front of V. “What got you in such a pissy mood anyway?”

“You’re in my head. Figure it out.”

V has been on edge since they left Pacifica; and the pile of bodies on the floor. He knows it’s because of that, but he can’t quite figure out the _why_. Johnny gets bits and piece of V, but some parts of her are still so scrambled up he can’t tell which way is up and which way is down. Hell, he doesn’t think V even knows which beat she marches to. 

_How in the hell did you survive with a mind like that?_ He thinks, frustrated. It’s all knots and sharp edges. A paradox tangled up in a nice, if permanent, bitch face. 

Johnny takes a shot, says, “This about the Voodoo Boys?”

The woman storms off. She steps on her finished cigarette and Johnny can feel the stitches on her shoulder start to burst.

“What? A few of them got killed and it got your panties in a twist?” He shouts as she walks off. The former Boogeyman thinks about catching up to her, and like magic he is _there_ , looking down on the sweaty forehead, smudged dark lipstick, the twitch of her jaw. Why is she so angry? “It’s because of them Evelyn—”

“Don’t bring her name up just to win an argument. Have more decency than that.”

He touches her arm, calmly, not sudden or too rough. Johnny has been with her long enough to know she hates to be treated less than — like a withering flower, delicate, wasting away — but she hates it more when he touches her unexpectedly. It would flare up her nerve endings. Create a sensation not unlike a first degree burn. How in the hell has V survived this long in their business, how she has kept herself in check, to present such great restraint and self-discipline, when under the cold exterior the whole world is burning, flames flaring her insides, all the time — all the _goddamn_ time — he does not know. He cannot imagine such strong will could ever exist. If nothing else, this ex-corpo has earned his respect. God knows he has met his fair share of rats who have crumbled and buckled under pressure. Not her. Not Antonia.

Johnny remember then the quick beat of her heart when Alt waved a hand and screams seemed to echo all around. The tightness of her knuckles. The short of breath.

“It’s about Alt, then.”

“She’s-…” V starts. Inhales. “God, she just killed them without hesitation. I don’t-… _Alt_ wouldn’t do that. I don’t know what the fuck that was but your Alt wasn’t in there.”

No, she wasn’t. Alt Cunningham died in an Arasaka facility. After they used her up and she no longer served any purpose, they disconnected her. Foolishly, thinking they had killed her conscious along with her body. But her construct had escaped. The only real part left of his Alt was her need for retribution. 

(His Alt would never have killed anyone so coldly. But wanting revenge? His girl thirsted for it as much as he did. She just had the self-control Johnny lacked.)

“I know,” he says, slowly. “She told us—”

“Why the hell aren’t you more pissed off, huh?” V shows fangs pretending to be a smile. “Alt, your past girlfriend, the one you went on a rampage for, turns out to have her construct out in the whole wide Net and she’s _not_ even Alt anymore. Just some dangerous scary A.I. wearing her face. How in the fuck are you not pissed off?”

“Why would I be? I mourned Alt a long time ago.”

It’s true. Johnny mourned. Someone he cared for was taken from him and he responded in kind. And personally speaking? He could have mourned for a few months if Adam Smasher hadn’t stopped him.

“You call what you did _mourning_? Jesus Christ, Johnny. Do you hear yourself sometimes?”

Yeah, she’s starting to piss him off. “What the fuck do you call it?”

“A narcissist using his girlfriend’s death to do what whatever the fuck he pleases!”

“Really, this shit? _Now_?” Johnny lets go of her arm, the feedback of her anxiety getting to him. “I thought I _felt_ guilt, V? Thought I had feelings or whatever the shit you implied! Now that I accept Alt is long dead and buried you have a problem with me? The fuck is wrong with _you_?”

V grunts, “It was never about Alt, was it, Johnny? It was all about you.”

“I’d say you were on your period but you don’t get it in a few days. So I’ll just assume you’re in one of your moods to be a fuckin’ cunt.”

V slaps him. He’s surprised how real it feels. Fucking hurts. Johnny can feel his blood rushing to the cheek she touched. He grins, licks his lips. 

God, it’s good to feel something real.

“You know, you’re good at that. Is my cheek all red and angry? Feels like it.” He chuckles, silver fingers rubbing the burn. “If we were in a sleazy motel I’d say do it again while I’m fucking into you.”

Something hitches in her mind. Makes her hesitate, take a step back. “Fuck off, Johnny,” she mutters, starts to walk off again.

“Really? I mention wanting to fuck you and you walk away?” Her steps quicken. Johnny doesn’t know what for. He doesn’t need to be close to her for her to hear him. “Then again, you _never_ were that into fucking yourself. There was a certain _disconnect,_ wasn’t it? Your body wanting one thing and your mind burying it, fighting so hard to keep those nasty impulses down. You no longer knew what you liked or didn’t like. But it’s gotten harder to ignore that slutty voice in your head, huh? Guess that’s the one good thing about having me as your parasite. You get to actually enjoy yourself while you fuck yourself on your fingers.” And God, does he feel it at times. Way into the night when she thinks he’s sleeping off in some corner of her head. Johnny doesn’t feel the orgasm way after she’s done, but he enjoys the sensations her fingers evoke in her body. Kind of sweet, in a way. As if she’s discovering that part of herself for the first time. From the way her brain is wired, she probably is. V is no virgin. She’s fucked many times before. To appease or to distract. But she always had to fake how much she liked it, that she came at all. V doesn’t pretend now. She _can’t_. Not while Johnny is in her; knowing every little fantasy coming to the surface. It drives him insane he can’t touch her for real. “I bring parts of you you’ve kept under lock and key. Like I said, mold on fruit. Ruining the perfect little corpo wannabe. Oh, but _sweetheart_ , you don’t have to hate it every step of the way. It can be fun. Trust me, I would know.”

V halts her steps on the end of the staircase, “Alt won’t help us and all you’re thinking about is screwing me?”

“Hey, one last ride.”

“Do you hear yourself? Alt said she already got all the help she needs and told us to leave. We did all of this — playing mercenary, little helper, what have you, taken I don’t know how many lives — and for _what_? To be told to fuck off by a bitchy A.I.? Fuck’s sake, Johnny. _This is it_. You’re taking over and you’re staying in this body! I’m dying and you’re trapped! That is, if Arasaka doesn’t get to us first. We’re fucked, Johnny. We’re so _fucked_.”

Her heartbeat quickens, breaths start to heave. Johnny glitches himself to her side.

“Hey. Come on, breathe,” he says, a hand coming to rest on her shoulder. The non-injured one. His thumb runs circles around the dark fabric. “I know you remember how to.”

She shakes her head. System is having one of its little freak outs, it seems. “I wanna throw up.”

Johnny guides her to the nearby plastic chair. “Sit down. Come on.”

Her hands start to shake. She grips the armrest to steady herself. “What are we gonna do, Johnny?” V whispers, true emotions coming to the surface. “We don’t have much time left.”

He sighs, runs a hand over his greasy hair. “It’s only been two weeks.”

“Yeah, and I’m having these attacks more frequently. I’m-… I can feel you reaching into me, molding me. Won’t be long now.”

“It won’t come to that,” he says, gets in front of her. Forces V to look up at him. “It won’t.”

She tries to laugh, almost chokes. “You’re a prophet now, Johnny?”

“No. I’ve just been called a stubborn asshole too many times for it not to be true. And I promise you, right now, this isn’t over till I’m out of your messy head.”

“And you somehow get your body back. How you’re gonna swing that? We don’t even know what they did to you.”

“We will.”

“That easy?” She smiles, shrugs her shoulders. “You say it and it comes to fruition.”

“V. You’re getting your body back, too,” he whispers, silver hand covering hers. “There. Now it will come true.”

This time she does laugh. Whole heartedly. It takes them both by surprise. “God, you’re impossible.”

He grins all the same. “Made you laugh.”

“Yeah, you did,” she says, breathing steadying again.

Her features soften. For a second, all the messed up entanglements untwine, and Johnny is left with a V without the great weight of the world on her shoulders. It doesn’t last, of course. Less than a second. Yet. The thought he has the capacity to do so stirs something in him. He shoves the notion aside. Tries something else.

“And if you ever want a nice booty call to blow off steam you just need—”

V huffs, “You just had to ruin it, didn’t you.”

“Couldn’t help myself.”

He makes her laugh again. It heats his chest and agitates his insides. Johnny is worried. He hasn’t had that annoying reaction since Alt.

* * *

When they reach the safe house, Johnny makes sure to fold her clothes over the bed, dirty socks and underwear thrown to a small basket. He washes her body. Careful with the fresh bruises and tender stitches. He copies her hair routine he was forced to watch. Makes sure to massage her body with the body cream V keeps under the cabinet. Johnny puts on fresh pajamas, cooks a grilled cheese sandwich, and chomps down till the woman wakes up from her exhausted slumber.

“Oh.” Is the first thing to come out of her mouth. It sounds like a moan; pride stirs inside Johnny. “You make a really good grilled cheese.”

“Thanks,” he says, taking his seat in front of her. He choose the silver pajamas because it’s one of her favorites. She looks good on them. Less uptight and cold. “I’ve lived off of them most of my teenage years so I guess you could say it’s one of my specialties.”

“Wow, this is really good,” she continues to take bite after bite, devouring the whole thing in less than two minutes. Johnny’s lips curl upwards. “No offense, but you should have become a chef.”

“Yeah, Johnny’s One Grilled Cheese, no fries, no ketchup, just motherfuckin’ American cheese on buttered white bread. Fuckin’ divine!”

V laughs, mouth full. “It really is.”

He takes a short bow, “Here at your service.”

She laughs some more, trying her darn hardest to chew through it. When she swallows it all down, Johnny is surprised to see she’s still smiling. She’s not faking it. She’s not buttering him up to get something out of him. V is just fucking smiling because she’s happy. Content. His pride resurfaces at full force, leaves him a bit unbalanced.

God help him, he cares when she’s happy.

V looks down on her plate, stares and stares. Johnny sighs, “You want seconds?”

A blush fights its way to her cheeks and he has to be honest, the man has never seen her so at ease. So fucking happy to be next to him.

“Will you show me how you made it?”

Yes, Johnny is trapped. Johnny can’t escape V no matter how hard he tries. But honestly? At this point, Johnny isn’t sure he wants to. 

(Is it because he’s a parasite who isn’t full till he’s done eating her whole, or has her own personality infected him in return, made him care for something other than himself? To be frank, he doesn’t want the answer. He’s content in being blissful in this rare moment of harmony between the two.)

“Fine,” he says. His chest heats up at the brightness coming from her eyes. “But if you burn the cheese, you clean it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here, have a whole ass chapter of Johnny falling for V against his will!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I’m nothing.
> 
> That is the truth. She’s nothing. Nothing but a hollow shell made to function at 100% accuracy. She’s not a person. She hasn’t been one for a very long fucking time. She’s nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing—

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Valentine's Day!!!
> 
> here's some messed up backstory for antonia and some johnny/v angst goodness !!

Three full weeks have passed and they are nowhere near a solution. Even after all the shit and the blood and the odd jobs they were forced to take to keep their head above ground — nobody fucking knows how to help them. Antonia inspects the blue bottle, shaking it in her lap. Misty’s blockers are almost empty. They don’t got much time left. The red pills rest in her other hand.

“Would you have stopped,” she begins, on the bed, legs crossed and hands tight. “If Alt had asked you to, would you have?”

Johnny glitches from the nearby window to laying on the bed. Today he has decided to remove his jacket, push up his sleeves, and leave his tie an unfinished mess. 

_Guess ghosts have their off days too._

“Fuck off, the suit was tight,” he says. Then glances at the bottle, looks back at her. “What are you thinking, V?”

“I asked you a question.”

Johnny pushes his hair back. It remains a mess of greasy dark strands. “I don’t know alright.”

“You don’t know,” she repeats.

“Yeah, I don’t fucking know,” he fires back. She can feel him becoming agitated. “This whole thing started with her dying. So, no, I don’t fucking know if I would have stopped if she asked. How would that even be possible? What kind of question is that?”

“Just a question.”

He frowns, staring at the red bottle in her hand. “Just a question, V? That why you keep looking at your fucking death sentence?”

“It would be quick,” she says, quietly. “It wouldn’t hurt.”

“Wouldn’t hurt my ass! You would die, V. Got that? You down on those fucking pills and you are as good as dead.”

She stares him down, popping the lid. “This bullshit would be fixed.”

“Fixed? You call me taking over your fucking body fixing the issue?”

“There is no fucking cure, alright, Johnny? We tried! Nobody is coming to save us. Like it or not, you’re killing me from the inside out. And, maybe, if we accepted the facts and got this over with, you might actually have a chance at a second life!”

The Boogeyman grabs her wrist. Stares her down with those dark sharp eyes, body trembling from anger.

“You think I want a second life if it means I have to take yours?”

“The fuck is the difference, Johnny?” She’s shaking too, but not out of rage — from pure exhaustion. Misery, even. “It’s either you or me. Alright? You gotta take it. You gotta stop fighting a losing battle.”

“No,” he grunts, voice rumbling, and touch lingering. “No. I won’t stop. Not until we exhaust all our options—”

“We _have_ exhausted all our options!”

“—Not until I know you’re safe.”

That breaks her. She drops the two bottles, breath heaving, tremors overwhelming her entire body. Antonia lets Johnny drag her to his lap. Where he hides her face in his neck and settles her trembling form around his arms. He shushes her, his silver hand coming to caress her hair. 

“I feel like I haven’t been clear so let me fix that,” he says. “I will do you no wrong. We are well past that. V, make no mistake. When the time comes, it’ll be my life for yours. This is not up for debate, you hear me? We’re not going to stop until you’re safe. I will do you no wrong, V. I will do you no wrong.”

_I’m nothing._

That is the truth. She’s nothing. Nothing but a hollow shell made to function at 100% accuracy. She’s not a person. She hasn’t been one for a very long fucking time. She’s nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing—

“You are _everything_ to me,” he proclaims, his embrace tightening. The worst part? He means it. She can feel it in his core. Johnny Silverhand will do her no wrong. “I won’t stop till you’re okay.”

Antonia cries. Because her face is hidden from the world and Johnny won’t let her go.

* * *

Johnny Silverhand has a problem. A big one.

He’s fucked. Completely and thoroughly fucked.

The man is surprised it didn’t hit him sooner, he’s been inside her body for almost three weeks now, day in and day out, _always_ , forced to be near her. And he hadn’t noticed it.

It takes one early morning to put it all into perspective.

Johnny wakes up, still pissed off, still an asshole, but for a minute he feels different. Like he’s back for real. Things feel solid, fingers sprawl over the sheets and he curls his toes — he’s alive. He’s _free_.

Then, something drops.

No. It’s more as if the concrete ground Johnny stood on crumbles beneath him. He feels alone. He feels like something is missing.

The man turns his head — _oh_ , and there it is.

A woman is still snoring under those very same sheets. Her brown hair cascading through the pillow, soft features given the moment to relax, to be safe. The Boogeyman is hit with the realization that he is being given the rare oportunity to see V in a moment of vulnerability; that she shows this to him. That she’s there. She’s _always_ there.

And a stupid wave of relief washes over him.

Johnny Silverhand cares for V.

He’s so fucked.

(Johnny Silverhand remembers what he did for her father. Feels sick to his stomach.)

* * *

Johnny is smiling from ear to ear at the sight of his old car.

“Holy shit,” he whistles, hands going to his waist. He walks over the slightly beat up Porsche, hands dancing over the silver hood. “Can’t believe she kept it.”

“Is he acting like a six year old child?” Rogue asks, laughing by her side.

Antonia smiles, despite herself. “More or less.”

He howls, in fact, glitching himself into the car and tapping on the dashboard.

“Say Rogue fucking thank you — wow! Never thought I’d see this beauty again. Fuckin’ hell!”

“Johnny says thank you,” she tells Rogue.

“That would be a first,” the older woman says, smiling all the same. She throws Antonia the keys. “Now get this piece of junk out of here. I’m tired of having it take place in my garage.”

“You know what, I take that thank you back!”

Antonia rolls her eyes. “Thank you, Rogue. I’ll get this out of your hands.”

The ex-corpo moves to get in the driver’s seat, joining an unusual grinning Johnny. This situation is so bizarre she doesn’t even notice Rogue getting close, tapping on the car window to slide it down.

“Hey, V,” she begins, glancing between her and what she presumes is an empty car seat. “Be careful out there, okay? I know you got some people you can trust. But word is spreading about you having something of Arasaka’s. The bounty on your head is growing.”

Antonia nods. Hands tighten over the steering wheel.

“Thank you for not selling us out, Rogue. Johnny must have meant a great deal to you.”

The older woman smiles, but it doesn’t reach her eyes.

“I was more worried about you, kid.” She steps back. “Johnny could always take care of himself. But he never asked the people he dragged down with him how they felt about the matter.”

Johnny’s enthusiasm is snuffed out. From the corner of her eye, she can see his smile drop, eyes no longer glistering from whatever small bliss the Boogeyman had for his vintage ride. He looks at Rogue, then at Antonia. Doesn’t utter a word as his eyes set over the dashboard.

“I’ll be okay,” the ex-corpo says, not quite believing it.

“Please take care of yourself, V.”

Antonia starts the car. Gets the gear shift out of manual, drives off Rogue’s chop shop as if she’s done it a thousand times before. Johnny remains silent. There is a brief moment however, where a song comes on, and she can hear fade humming from her side. She raises the volume. It’s a silly tune, something you’d hear out a Top 20 Hits of 2060’s. But the chorus is addicting. Antonia begins to hum alongside Johnny.

“You’re good with her,” he says, then adds. “The car, I mean.”

_Feels like I’ve driven her a hundred times._

“You probably have. We’re… blending.”

_We are, aren’t we? It’s odd. Doesn’t feel as nerve-wrecking like I thought it would be. Becoming someone else, I mean._

“Do you think it’s because I’m sucking pieces of you into me?”

_Like a grumpy old sponge?_

“Not that old.”

_That’s the part you have a problem with? Johnny, you’re a riot._

“So I’ve been told.”

She watches the road, seeing everyone going their merry way, a city so brutal, so vicious, yet blind to the true underbelly of their surroundings. Night City might think it’s the wolf baring its fangs — but it is merely a small insect crawling along the walls of their world, blissful unaware it remains alive due to convenience. Antonia signals to take a left turn.

“What parts of me are in you?” She asks out loud. _Needs_ to be out loud.

“I don’t like smoking as much,” he says, staring out the window. “The taste is stronger, and it sits on the back of my throat for too long. Or maybe it’s there as much as it used to be. I just never noticed it before. Being hooked up on these things for decades probably dims the effects.”

“Just that?”

Johnny sighs, stretches his legs.“I think I can see myself clearly now.”

“How so?”

“The consequences of my actions aren’t hidden anymore,” he explains, still not looking at her. “We’re linked, V. Joined at the hip. I can feel everything you feel. See everything you saw. A few days ago, I woke up in your body, except we weren’t back in the safe house. We were running around Night City, body aching, with blisters on our feet, tracking down the Boogeyman through the subway station. God, how long was that? Three years ago? You were twenty three, V. In your fucking twenties! And you were chasing down a man twice your age, knife in your hand, for— _what_? Four million? Seriously? You’re willing to die for four million?”

“It’s our line of work,” she fires back. “I know what I signed up for. Don’t treat me like a child—”

“Then, _then_ , you fucking attack me in a car full of people.”

“Five people, tops.”

“You fucking stab my leg.”

“You deserved it.”

“Then I get the upper hand — because I’m the Boogeyman, remember? I’m the one dropping bodies through Arasaka headquarters. The one who killed a bar filled with cyberpsychos with a fuckin’ pencil. Jesus, V! Remember that Tyger Claws gang? I fucking shot twenty of them in their own territory. The _fuck_ were you thinkin’, uh? That you’re different? That you’re on my level?”

“I was on your level.” She was. If there’s anything Antonia would fight passionately about is that she made Johnny Silverhand sweat. Made him fall through a three story staircase, gave him a run for his money through a Continental window. Yes, she had been on his damn _level_. “Don’t patronize me.”

“I felt the knife going through your heart.”

Antonia bites her tongue, speeds up. Not a pleasant memory indeed. “Fuckin’ hurt, didn’t it?”

“Yeah, it did,” he says, sighs. He still won’t look at her. “We sat on that bench, feeling the metal inside your flesh, hearing the blood still pumping… If Viktor hadn’t come when he did you would have died in less than an hour.”

Viktor had been so angry with her. Antonia doesn’t think she has ever seen him that agitated, cursing to high heavens. The ripdoctor had even punched the man who brought her to him. “Who said you could move her, huh? Who fucking said you could move someone with a knife through their fucking heart? Why didn’t you just wait you piece of shit?” She smiles at the memory. In this line of work you don’t get to place your care and trust in others. Somehow, Viktor didn’t get the memo. He had adopted her from day one. (And if there was advantage in his naive affection, she took every last drop of it.) Without Viktor she would be six feet under. Johnny is right about that.

“That was the whole point,” she says. “I was coming to kill you. It was either you or me.”

“But I didn’t know you then.”

The way he utters those words. Like a sucker punch to the throat. Forced out of him, intense — as if it’s set in stone.

“I didn’t know you either,” she whispers. Because what else is she supposed to say? Neither of them really knew each other. Professional courtesy now and then, but they weren’t Johnny and V then. They didn’t know each other’s past and rage and how theirs bodies ached; how they fell asleep in their beds. They didn’t know each other. 

They do now.

“Look,” he says. And this time he does look at her. She can feel his dark gaze on her and it feels different from all the times he has done so. Feels more like a caress than a push. “I know I’m an asshole.”

_No shit._

“But I don’t want to hurt you anymore.”

Her heartbeat quickens. She slows down, knowing full well doctor’s orders (Viktor’s oders) say to steady your breathing if you feel it almost bursting out of your chest.

“Is this about what Rogue said?”

“I knew I let her down a long time ago.” Eyes drift to her tight knuckles gripping the steering wheel. “Look, V. You didn’t choose this. You didn’t choose having my construct implanted into your head and you sure as hell didn’t choose me as your walking talking tapeworm. But I could’ve made this… partnership a lot easier from the beginning. I fucked up. I know that. I won’t do it again.”

“You did,” she says, breathes out. “I don’t know if I can trust you, Johnny.”

There. There’s the full ugly truth. It’s out and Antonia can’t drag it back in.

The man next to her keeps his gaze on her, his features soften.

“I know how you see the world,” he says. “Everything is so sharp. Almost too sleek. You spot someone’s weak spots like that.” He snaps his fingers. Antonia blinks. “When someone hits yours, a strange coldness sets in. You take all the shit you feel and push it inside in a neat little drawer, then throw away the key. Just as soon, you hit them with everything you got. But it’s precise. Tactical. That’s why you’re so good at our job. You don’t let it get personal. You hide yourself, V.”

She grinds her teeth. “This going somewhere?”

“You can’t hide yourself from me.” A cold shiver goes down her spine. “I see everything, V. I know. You can trust me because I know.”

_You don’t._

“I do.”

Antonia makes a hasty turn off the road. Doesn’t drive Johnny’s porsche into a wall but it’s near close. She’s parked in a close tight spot, front end almost hitting the cement wall, little less than an inch between them and the car on their right. Passengers going by honk their horns. An old lady screams profanities from down the street. Antonia feels like she can’t breathe.

“You saw it?” Her voice is so steady, sounds so calm, like a tight fishing line pushed to its limits.

“I felt it,” he answers, unbothered by her abrupt actions. “I felt everything he put you through, V. And I don’t see you any differently.”

A high sharp sound escapes her mouth. It crawls up her throat without warning and Antonia can’t stop. She laughs and laughs. Till her throat aches.

_Aren’t we a pair, Johnny? A tapeworm and a hollow shell._

“You’re not hollow.” His voice is sharp. Unflinching. “You’re not what he’s made you.”

_Johnny._

“You’re not.”

The cackle returns, but it doesn’t remain, instead it is stamped down, helped by the ripples of her body. Antonia’s eyes blur and only then she realizes she’s sobbing.

_I’m not even real, Johnny._

“You are.”

He places his hand over hers. Grips them till she stops shaking. His hold is strong, warm, rough by years of violent conflict. But his touch is so gentle. Almost afraid she might break if he makes the slightest pressure. It feels real.

* * *

The whole thing lasted for three days. Three long never-ending days.  
Her father had taken the weekend off and picked her up from school early. Little Antonia had been happy, she remembers. The girl almost never saw her father, and when she did, he would lock himself away in his study, leave his child to her own devices. So, little Antonia was happy. She had been surprised, however, that instead of going out to eat, or watch a movie, or do any of the other things he had once promised her, her father led her to his study, where he placed a small black chrome in front and said, “Today we will play a few games.”

Games.

In a sense, they were games. Puzzles. Riddles. The connection to her mind was assaulted with hundreds upon thousands of strategic data. From her perspective, it was like entering a wide white room, where the games would conjure in front of her, and little Antonia had to figure them out. One by one. By the end her mind was a pulse of fire, hitting her from all sides. Everything hurt, everything granted her ears — it was like being slowly submerged into a tub of boiling water.

“You will learn to control yourself,” he had said to his wailing daughter. “I won’t let you out till you do.”

To her, it had been weeks. To her father, only a few hours.

She ate dinner and gone to bed afterward. Like any normal Friday night. It was easy to do so when you were no longer in your body but instead looked down upon yourself and ordered when to sit down, when to chew, when to brush your teeth, when to dress, and when to sleep. It was easy. Frightening, but easy.

The next day, more of the same. Except, now little Antonia had to show her worth. Win. Win, win, win, win, win — till every game no longer surprised her, till it all became dull. Years had passed in that small black box. Only hours to the outside world. Her father had been proud of her, she remembers. He had caressed her cheek — and it hurt, _everything hurt_ , everything fucking burned and like he was pulling her skin off — but he had smiled so openly, unlike any time he had smiled at her. He had looked so proud and happy to be her father that Antonia granted her teeth and bared the pain for his love.

“I love you,” he had told her. “Everything I’ve done is for you, Antonia. I want you to succeed in anything you do. I want you to fear nothing. I want you to bring the world to its knees.”

(Little Antonia died on that first day of madness. Antonia was not Antonia. Antonia didn’t even think she was even real in any true sense. But Antonia had been forged in poison — she had been made in her father’s image. She would do his bidding; because what else had she been created for?)

The last day had come. Six a.m. stroke high, Antonia rose and waited for her father in his study room.

“One final test,” he had said, as he walked in. “Then you’re ready. _Preparada para el mundo, mija_.”

He put a gun in front of her, over the mahogany desk and in front of the small black box that had become her whole world. He had put it there and ordered her:

“Shoot me.”

She had looked down on the gun, puzzled. Confused.

“Why?”

“Because there will be times, hija, when your emotions will catch up to you. You will find sentiment in places you shouldn’t find. It might seem appealing at first, to let your guard down and let it dictate your actions, but that is a lie, Antonia. All it will do is slow you down. A weak spot is a weak spot. In this world you cannot have the luxury to have any, not if you want to survive. If a man wishes to be King, mercy can never be an option.” Antonia had wondered if her father had meant her mother when he spoke of weak spots. But she had stayed dead quiet. “When that times comes, Antonia, when you do find yourself caring for something other than your yourself, I would like you to pick up a gun, and shoot it dead.”

She had picked up the gun, stared down her own father. Finger on the trigger. (She had remembered how to do it. From all the games. She had remembered, she tells herself, she had remembered precisely how to do it, she remembered, remembered, remembered—)

Her hand shook. Antonia had put the gun down.

“I can’t,” she had whispered, defeated. Ashamed.

Her father had looked at her with such kind eyes, for a moment, Antonia thought she hadn’t made a mistake.

“It’s alright, mija,” he had said, then picked up the gun. “I’ll do you this one courtesy.”

And pulled the trigger.


End file.
